


this modern love

by thatdarkhairedgirl



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Family Drama, Inter-House Rivalries, Post-War, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-09
Updated: 2015-12-09
Packaged: 2018-05-05 20:42:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5389559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatdarkhairedgirl/pseuds/thatdarkhairedgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A wedding is supposed to be a joyful union of two people, surrounded by their closest friends and family. Not… whatever the hell <i>this</i> particular disaster is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	this modern love

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for/from a prompt on **interhouse_fest** by **katmarajade**.

 

 

  
_**one year** _

 

 

Pansy slides out of bed right as Justin cracks his eyes open, watching blearily as Pansy puts on stray clothes scattered over the bedroom floor. She’s naked, and the small part of his brain that isn’t crippled by his devastating hangover takes the opportunity to appreciate the line of her spine as she stretches, the light streaming over her skin through the blinds. The bed dips, then lifts, and Justin rolls over onto his back, tongue sticking to the desert-dry roof of his mouth while Pansy pads around the room in a pair of electric-green Kestrels socks and nothing else. She takes his old FC jersey from the back of a chair and sniffs it, then tosses it aside in favor of one of his sweaters.

“I’m putting the kettle on,” she tells him, voice slightly muffled as she tugs his shirt over her head, and Justin tries to focus on saying, “That’d be great, thanks,” only instead it comes out sounding more like, “ _Blarrgh_.”

Outside he can hear birds twittering and chirping, a garbage truck shifting gears. His girlfriend clacks away in the kitchen and Justin scrubs a hand over his face, palm rasping against his unshaven cheek as he tries to pull himself together. Slowly, carefully, he tries to sit up and immediately feels like he’s going to die; his heartbeat speeds up to a hummingbird pace, his entire head feels like it’s been cleaved right down the center with an axe.

“What did I do last night?” he says out loud, not really expecting an answer.

“You went around the world with the bartender!” Pansy calls back. “Hannah had to intervene right around your fourth tour of Mexico!”

Justin blinks stupidly at the wall. “I went to  _Mexico?_ ”

“ _Tequila_ , love. You had too much tequila.” Pansy pops her head back into the doorway and something in Justin’s neck creaks as he turns to face her. “Blame it on your friend for having an open bar at his wedding – Ernie should’ve known that  _someone_ would take advantage of all that Hufflepuff generosity.”

She gives him a wink and disappears, and Justin realizes that he has exactly enough energy left to either give her an answer or pass out in a pool of his own drool. He chooses the middle ground, flopping backwards against the headboard with his arms out, staring up at the weird yellow mottling on the ceiling. Last night was Ernie and Mandy’s wedding, and somewhere in between Zacharias’s best man speech and Justin’s second gin and tonic the world tilted completely off its axis; there’s dinner and fireworks and the chorus of ‘Come On Eileen’ on a loop in his brain, a reception hall bar counter littered with empty glasses. He remembers Pansy best: spinning into his arms on the dance floor, her knee sliding over his in the backseat of a cab.

Something important happened last night – under the feel of Pansy’s mouth on his, through the fog of impossible recollection, past the haze of too much tequila, Justin  _knows_ it did, he can feel it. Justin slumps forward as he tries to remember, fingers threading through his hair, right as the teakettle lets out a loud whistle. Pansy comes back a few minutes later with a plate in one hand and her wand in the other, two mugs of tea levitating a little ways behind her.

“Aren’t you glad I thought to hide a slice in my purse?” she says, climbing onto the bed and straddling Justin’s knees over the blankets. Justin lifts his head and the sight of the wedding cake – vanilla, with thick layers of strawberry and heavy yellow frosting – nearly makes him gag. Pansy smirks at the pained look on his face, and with a flick of her wand Justin’s mug lowers itself to his eye level, bobbing slowly in midair until he’s steady enough to grab it. Pansy rearranges herself so that she’s sitting cross-legged in front of him, plate in her lap and wand set off to the side, sipping her own tea and watching him over the rim of her cup.

“There’s milk and sugar in yours. If it tastes like ginger that’s the Clarity Solution I threw in at the end.” She breaks off a piece of cake and brings it to her lips. “Drink up, drunky.”

The tea is hot but Justin swallows down almost half of it in one go: it’s amazing, the sugar and the potion going straight to his brain and relaxing whatever is cramped and aching up there. Justin snatches a bite of the cake in her lap and Pansy rolls her eyes at him, licking frosting off her fingers before tugging her messy hair back into a ponytail. He’s still a hungover mess and she somehow manages to look good even with yesterday’s makeup smeared over her face, cake crumbs clinging to her borrowed sweater. Pansy teases him about the night before and Justin studies her face as she speaks, takes in the playful glint in her eyes, the smug little upturn at the corner of her mouth, and  _God_ , in that moment the missing memory hits him with all the force of a marble sculpture cracking him over the head.

He asked her to marry him last night. There, in full technicolor recollection, the last bit of the evening that didn’t get swallowed up by the fog plays behind his eyes; Pansy is laughing at his two left feet and all Justin can think of is the two of them laid out in this bed, skin to skin, his mouth at her neck and her hands pulling at his hair.

 _If you aren’t inside me in the next ten seconds, I am going to die_, she’d said to him then.

“I can’t believe I let myself be  _seen_ with you,” she says to him now, “I mean, you were doing the  _sprinkler_ , you loon.”

Pansy laughs as she tips back her tea, frosting stuck to the side of her lip. Justin swallows the remainder of his mug but when she looks back at him her expression has softened, just a little. He’d asked her to marry him while three sheets to the wind, eager and happy and drunk as a first year with their first sip of butterbeer.  _Will you?_  he’d asked, his fingers splayed out over her ribcage as he moved inside her, and the  _Yes_  she gave him in return rang out louder than any church bell.

“Still dizzy?” Pansy asks, and Justin nods.

“Kind of.”

“Poor lamb – we’ll have to get you to a Healer, see if they’ve started taking hopeless cases.”

“I’ll wait until the room stops spinning before we see about that. But maybe later, I mean, if you’re up for it, we could go out and look for a ring.”

Justin reaches out to smudge away the frosting at the corner of her mouth with his thumb and Pansy only looks at him with her eyebrows raised, her lips parted in a sudden ‘o’ of surprise. She looks at him like she thought he’d forgotten. He can’t believe he almost did. It only takes a moment for Pansy to collect herself, but when she speaks there’s a little waver in her voice, right under the bite he knows well.

“Let’s get your head screwed on straight first,  _then_ we can talk about rings.”

 

 

_**nine months** _

 

  
  
It’s twenty after nine and Justin is only just now leaving the Ministry, shoveling case files and rolls of parchment into his bag as he hastily makes his way through the Atrium toward the exit. He’s been stuck in the Records Room doing research for Madam Montgomery’s latest case, and for as much as he enjoys inhaling decades-old dust and straining his eyes to read the impossibly small handwriting of long-dead Wizengamot members, this is his third straight day of doing so – not to mention the fifth day he’s worked past regular office hours, and almost a full week since he’s seen his fiancée for longer than the few minutes they spend passing each other in the mornings, or the five-minute window they've been sharing before falling asleep at night.

Pansy’s freelance work has picked up the past few months but she still pulls a few shifts here and there at the Leaky Cauldron, waitressing whenever one of Hannah’s new girls calls out or if they’re shorthanded for the night. Justin is too tired to Apparate without Splinching himself and decides instead to walk the few blocks from the Ministry to the Diagon Alley entrance, hoping to catch Pansy for a few minutes before heading home. When he gets there, the Leaky is weirdly busy for a Tuesday night: all the floor tables are full and the bar is packed, the wait staff weaving dangerously around customers and busboys just to reach their tables through the crowd. Tom’s office door is closed and Hannah’s making change at the till; Pansy is back behind the bar, pouring drinks for a pair of businessmen in pinstriped robes when Justin walks through the Muggleside door. She looks up when the door slams shut and it takes a moment for that click of recognition to show in her face, her smile shifting from  _professional_ to  _real_ as he crosses through the room.

 _“Break?”_  she mouths, and Justin nods, maneuvering through the dinner crowd until he finds the side hallway behind the main staircase, slipping past the pantry door. He makes himself as comfortable as he can in the dark closet of a room, shedding his jacket and loosening his tie, muttering a quick “ _lumos_ ” and balancing his wand on the shelf behind him so that he can read through his latest brief while he waits.

He starts when the door opens a short while later, nearly dropping his paperwork all over the floor, but it’s just Pansy. “Conferences are the  _worst_ ,” she says with a shake of her head, “It’s been nonstop service practically since I got here, and I don’t think these weirdos are ending the party anytime soon.”

Pansy perches herself on one of the barrels of ale tucked into the corner, swinging her feet a little as she sinks her hands into her hair, pulling it out from her bun and letting it fall loose around her shoulders. She turns her face up to his, smiling as she crooks her finger at him. “I’ve got fifteen minutes before Hannah comes storming after me. Aren’t you at least going to say hello?” she teases, and Justin moves toward her without any further preamble.

He missed her. They kiss for a while, slow and soft and quiet, but neither of them moves to make it more. He brings her nearer to him once they part, his arms around her, her head to his chest and it hits him all at once that this is probably the longest they’ve actually been awake around each other in at least a few weeks – since Ernie’s wedding, maybe even since they picked out her ring. Pansy traces her nails over the back of his neck, making the hair there stand up on end when she tells him, “My mother wrote to me today.”

“Was it another Howler?” he asks, swatting at Pansy’s hand when she scratches him. He ignores her, because it’s a valid question: Genevieve Parkinson sent one to Pansy when she and Justin started dating, and at least two for every major holiday since. The last one arrived at his parents’ house on Christmas Eve, which made for a  _really_ uncomfortable conversation with his mother and new sister-in-law.

“No, it was just regular post.”

“Really?” he asks, and Pansy nods against him. “Anything interesting?”

“Kind of? I mean, near the end she said she’s…  _happy_ for me, which is an insane reaction, right? After the last fit she pitched?”

Justin pulls back slightly and trails his hands down her sides, stopping at her hips. Pansy wears her engagement ring on a chain around her neck and Justin tugs it out from under the neck of her sweater, where it’s fallen into the dip of her cleavage. His hand closes around the diamond and Pansy covers it with both of hers, looking up at him through her eyelashes. “My mother wants to help with the wedding,” she tells him, a note of vulnerability bleeding through the indifference in her tone, and Justin doesn’t trust himself to answer right away.

It does good to be careful when talking to Pansy about her family; her father is in prison and her mother and brother have been living abroad since May of ‘98, and for all that’s happened between them Pansy’s soft spot has been – and probably always will be – how much she misses her mother. To him, making this kind of contact doesn’t feel like the rebuilding of a burned bridge; it feels like the setup to a long con, like a mistake waiting to happen.

Justin tugs on the chain and Pansy comes forward, her hands on his cheeks as she pulls him down for another kiss. “That’s good, Pans,” he says when they part, “That’s a really good start,” and just as he’s about to lean in and kiss her again the pantry door swings open, yellow light fanning across the floor until someone raises the rest of the lights.

Hannah coughs loudly, tucking her wand back into her pinned-up hair. “Thought I’d find you two here. You  _really_ need to find another hiding place, Pansy.”

Pansy makes a fist in Justin’s shirt and whispers, “ _Shit_ ,” and then adds for Hannah’s benefit, “I wouldn’t need to hide here if you’d gone with  _my_ idea and set up a permanent snogging closet. It works for everyone!”

“You and I both know that the Leaky isn’t zoned for that kind of thing.” Hannah rolls her eyes at the both of them, fond and annoyed. “As sorry as I am to break up the lovebirds, there’s a crowd that needs attending to, and I am  _pretty sure_  you’re still technically on the clock.”

“On the clock, under the table, as long as I get paid.” Pansy pecks Justin quickly on the cheek and slides down from the barrel. “Sorry to make you wait, I’ll get back on the floor,” she says to Hannah, and then to Justin: “See you at home?”

“Have fun,” he says, and when Pansy saunters past Hannah hits her gently with the dishtowel hanging from her apron.

 _“Again?”_  she sighs, “Justin, that’s the third time I’ve caught you back here – I swear, the two of you are nothing but trouble.”

“But I  _like_ trouble,” he says with a grin, and Hannah rewards him with a smack on the arm.

  

 

_**seven months** _

 

  
  
“ _Again?!_  Oh,  _mother_  –”

_“Susan.”_

“Come  _on!_  That’s three hands in a row – he’s  _got_  to be cheating, or something.”

Ernie grins apologetically as he gathers up the money lying at the center of the table, adding it neatly to his steadily growing pile. Susan crosses her arms and gives the wizards seated around the table a furious glare, which Justin shakes his head at and everyone else ignores completely. There are five former Hufflepuffs gathered around a chipped wooden table in Wayne’s basement, celebrating their annual poker night in the style to which they’ve become accustomed: Zach drinks, Ernie smokes, and Susan nearly flips the table whenever she has to fold.

“Calm down, Sue,” Justin says from around the straw of his drink. “Just because Ernie’s on a winning streak doesn’t mean you can’t be a good sport about it.”

“You’re all conspiring against me, I know it.” Susan leans forward, sliding the cards Zacharias has dealt her to her side of the table. “Sticking together just ‘cause you’re  _men_. It’s  _sick_ , is what it is. It’s enough to make a girl stop gambling altogether.”

“And yet, you’re still here.”

Justin smirks and turns his attention to Zacharias, who is leaning over the table to deal out the next hand. A voice calls down from the top of the basement stairs and Wayne rises from the table before Zach reaches him, climbing up to answer and visible only from the shins downward to the friends waiting at the table. Susan takes one look at her new hand of cards and rolls her eyes, unceremoniously tossing them down to the tabletop.

Susan rises unsteadily from her chair and straightens out her clothes. “Fuck it,” she says irritably, looking right at Justin as she pops up the collar on her jacket, the bright orange Enforcer’s patch on the shoulder nearly glowing in the hazy light. “I’m heading home while I’ve still got galleons in the bank.”

“Sure you can make it without Splinching yourself?”

Ernie stubs out what’s left of his cigar and Susan makes a face. “ _Watch me_ ,” she snaps, and nearly knocks a returning Wayne over with her arm as she turns on the spot, disappearing in a swirl of grey cigar smoke that makes Justin cough until his face hurts.

Zach shakes his head, glancing at his watch. “Three hours. I think that’s the longest she’s stuck around in a while,” he says, sending Wayne’s hand down to his end of the table. “Think she made it home in one piece?”

“No eyeballs rolling around on the ground, mate, think she must’ve.” Wayne flips a few sickles into the pile in the center. “Why do we keep inviting her to these, anyway?”

Ernie snickers and shares a look with Justin. “We don’t – she just keeps showing up.”

“And do  _you_ want to be the one who tells her to leave? Because you’re obviously a braver man than I am. Besides,” he adds, “It’s worth it just to see the look on her face when Zach bluffed her with that pair of fives.”

“Damn right it was.” Zacharias leans back in his chair, stretching while the others weigh their options. “So what’s up with you and Parkinson, Justin? Is she a million galleons over budget yet or what?”

“Fuck off,” Justin says, no real malice behind it, and Zach just raises his eyebrows.

“Whatever. Just don’t let her go pulling that ‘innocent little girl’ shtick when they’re bleeding you dry just to pay for the cake.”

Wayne meets Justin’s eyes from across the table and Justin frowns, glancing away. Justin decides to raise, pulling another three sickles from the pile at his elbow, and Wayne follows suit. “He’s got a point, mate.”

Ernie nods in agreement. “Yeah, all pureblood girls want to be princesses on their wedding day – all satin and roses and, fuck, I don’t know,  _Goblin-made tiaras_ , or summat. Look at Mandy: she’s as easy as they come and we  _still_ spent two months arguing over whether or not we could work an aethenon-drawn carriage into our wedding budget.”

“Are you forgetting that a  _team_ of flying horses carried you to your reception?”

Ernie only shrugs at Justin’s question. “Should’ve seen what we had to cut to make it fit.”

“Just you wait.” Zach takes another pull from his beer, pointing across the table at Justin. “Witches like her want more than your sorry arse can ever afford. Two months from now you’ll be flat broke,  _wishing_  you listened to us.”

“Come on, you don’t know that.”

Ernie’s eyes flick up from his cards to meet Zach’s, and his voice is careful as he says, “No offense, Justin, but you’re – I mean, Muggle girls can’t be  _that_ much hassle, not like –”

“What Ernie  _means_ is that you aren’t prepared to deal with a witch like Pansy Parkinson,” Wayne interrupts, “She’s one of those who think magic is the be-all, end-all for everything, and I know running everything on eckletricity is  _fun_ and all, but it’s not going to be the same. She’s gonna want more than you can give her, mate, no getting around that.”

Justin stares at his friends, cards slipping slightly in his palm. He’s had three beers and a Firewhiskey chaser but it isn’t until right now that he starts feeling it; he’s known these men for half his life, now, laughed with them, fought with them, and he thought that  _Hufflepuffs_ would know better than to say things like this, that they wouldn’t immediately target in on the Muggle part of his life, that they wouldn’t, they  _wouldn’t_ –

“Look, Justin, I’m sorry. We’re just talking trash, we don’t mean anything by it.” Zacharias leans over to pat him on the arm. “We’re sorry, all right? You’re a good guy, but you  _definitely_ need to work on your poker face.”

Justin takes a quick breath, trying to let himself level back out to normal. “Well, I  _could_ do that,” he replies evenly, laying out his row of aces, “Or I could just empty your wallets some more.”

Zacharias swears as the others toss down their cards, grumbling as Ernie gets up to get another round of drinks. Justin gathers up his winnings and the night moves on without another word on the wedding.

 

 

_**five months** _

 

  
  
“I don’t think you’re understanding just how much you  _cannot_ be here right now!”

Astoria Greengrass hisses this at him, throwing back the velvet curtain so hard that it nearly falls off the brass rod over the doorway. Hannah shoves Justin out of the dressing room like he’ll be executed if he doesn’t leave in that exact instant, grabbing him by the hair and forcing his head down like a lawyer protecting their client from paparazzi photographers.

“Are you  _mental?_ ” she asks as they go, “Really, have you lost your mind?”

Justin tries to wrench himself free but finds that he can’t; Hannah nearly has him in a headlock as they storm out into the entrance of the dress shop, nails digging into his scalp so sharply he’s afraid he’ll start bleeding all over the carpet. Astoria follows them into the front and Hannah finally releases him; he gasps, panting for air, and when his hand flies up to his head to check there’s thankfully no blood.

Astoria crosses her arms over her chest, giving him a look so dark that the shopgirl trying to approach them immediately backs out of the doorway. “Just  _what_ do you think you’re doing here?”

“Are you  _trying_ to cause an accident, Justin?”

“You do realize this is a _private_ session, right?  _Private!_ ”

Justin looks between the two of them and can’t decide which woman is angrier. They would certainly be a more intimidating pair if they weren’t clad in dresses so ruffled they looked like Marie Antoinette's private closet had exploded all over them: Hannah frowns at him in lilac and Astoria stomps one bare foot in teal, the two witches staring at him with such intensity that it honestly surprises him that he hasn’t caught on fire.

“D’you lot think I planned this?” he asks, and the twin glares he gets in return means they think he did. “Oh, come on, what does it  _matter_ if I see her in her wedding dress? Not like I haven’t seen everything under it, already –”

“It’s because it’s  _bad luck_ , you  _moron_ ,” Astoria snaps, “If you see her right now, who  _knows_  what will go wrong?”

Justin rolls his eyes. “What, will she turn into a ball of wax if I see her? Will the room catch fire? Will –”

“You’ve been a wizard for  _how long_  now, Justin, and you still haven’t realized how magic works under pressure?” Hannah grips him by the arm and turns him to face her; one of the bows on the bodice of her dress has unraveled, the ribbon hanging limply at the side like a deflated balloon. “ _Stress_ is a problem.  _Weddings_  are  _stressful_. When witches are under a lot of stress,  _bad things_  can happen. We’re doing this for your own good, alright? No one wants any accidents just because you want to sneak a peek.”

Justin gapes at Hannah and Astoria turns back to the curtain; there’s movement back there, the sounds of Pansy and the dressmaker talking, and before he can even protest Hannah takes the opportunity to push him outside. The bells jangle overhead as he steps back in, hands held up in supplication, and the shopgirl turns on her heel and flees again when Astoria marches toward the door.

“I’m going, I’m going,” he tells them, despite Hannah’s disbelieving arch of her eyebrow. “But could you do one thing for me, before I go?”

“What?”

“Would you  _please_ tell her to go with something a little less – frill and frippery, for the two of you? I know Pansy’s still a pampered princess at heart, but I’d like people to walk into our wedding  _without_ thinking that the bridesmaids are due to pop out of a cake after the ceremony ends.”

He doesn’t  _quite_ duck the ball of fabric swatches Astoria throws at his head, but it’s not like it hurts.

 

 

 

_**three months** _

 

 

A few years ago, walking into his apartment to find Pansy Parkinson there would have been cause for either alarm, worry, or the immediate removal of his pants. Now, three years into a relationship and about half a year away from their wedding, unlocking the door to find Pansy on all fours on the living room floor, head jammed firmly into the flames of the fireplace, isn’t an entirely unsurprising sight.

Justin toes off his shoes at the door and shuts it with his foot, carrying his grocery bags into the kitchen and dumping them unceremoniously onto the empty countertop. There’s a high, shrill noise that might be a shout, followed closely by the distant sound of breaking glass, and even though he can’t quite hear Pansy’s half of the conversation, he’s pretty sure that the voice on the other end of the Floo is her mother. There’ve been a lot of conversations like these since Pansy agreed to let her mother help her plan the wedding: Genevieve criticizing the menu, the venue, the flowers, everything, all done via disparaging Floo calls at increasingly uncomfortable hours. Justin tolerates it for Pansy’s sake, but his patience with his soon-to-be mother-in-law is wearing thin.

Justin is almost finished putting groceries away when the Floo call ends with a shuddering rush of wind and smoke, the fire audibly sputtering out. When he looks out into the living room Pansy is still on her hands and knees, soot staining the front of her shirt; she pulls her head out of the empty fireplace and looks like she could cry at any second. She stands without saying anything and brushes herself off, then takes him by the hand and leads him into their bedroom without another word. Justin doesn’t say anything just yet, just closes the door and lays down beside her on the bed.

“Please don’t say  _‘I told you so,’_ ” she says to the ceiling, draping her forearm over her eyes. The smoke smell from the fireplace clings to her clothes, her hair. “You can say whatever you want as long as it’s not that.”

Justin rolls onto his elbow and looks down at her, palm resting flat against her stomach. “What happened?” he asks, and Pansy breathes out in a sigh, arm still over her face.

“I know what my family is. I know who they are, and what they’ve done, and I live with that. Every day, _I_  get to live with that. And to  _hear_ her – to hear her talk about  _inviting_ some of these people, all those aunts and uncles and cousins who  _scattered_ when, when You-Know-Who fell, I just – I  _can’t_ …”

He knows the story better than most: Pansy has scars from fighting in the last battle but all anyone remembers is one desperate, high-pitched plea in the middle of the Great Hall before the evacuation started; she’s been alone since the smoke cleared and on some level, Justin understands why she keeps reaching out to the people who’ve done nothing but hurt her, hoping and praying that this time will be different – that this time, everything will turn out all right. Pansy drops her arm and closes her hand over his, tugging at him gently until he takes the hint and moves so that he’s on top of her. Justin straddles her hips, trying not to rest his full weight on her, and runs his hands up and down her torso as he asks, “What do you want to do?”

“There is no way in  _hell_ I’m agreeing with her, just so – so fucking  _Sebastian Jugson_  and, and, I don’t know,  _Ianka Dolohov_  can come eat our food and hex your parents.” Pansy huffs out an aggravated breath so that her fringe flies up and flops back against her forehead. “I haven’t even  _seen_ half these people since I was eleven,  _none_ since I was seventeen, and I am  _not_ inviting them.”

Justin leans down and kisses her, soft and quick. “We don’t have to invite anyone you don’t want to. We can even send out  _anti_ -invitations, to let them know just how  _not invited_ to our wedding they are.”

Almost despite herself, Pansy smiles. “Letting my mother in on all of this was a terrible idea. I’m – I’m tired of talking about it. Can you just, I don’t know, fuck me into distraction, or something?”

“Absolutely,” he says, very seriously, moving so that Pansy can sit up a little and push his shirt off his shoulders. “I’ve been waiting for the kind of wedding-related problem we can solve with sex.”

“Good,” Pansy says with a laugh, “So have I.”

 

 

 

_**one month** _

 

 

 

  
Saturday afternoon and Justin is in a white-walled studio in the middle of London, surrounded by strangers and waiting by one of the tall windows for his partner to peel off her jacket and join him. Thunder rolls ominously over the streets outside as rain spatters against the glass; Susan’s hair is matted down over her ears from it, the color an indifferent shade of red made darker by the water, and her shoes squeak against the hardwood as she steps out to join him.

“You are  _so_ lucky I love you,” she tells him, rolling up the sleeves on her button-down shirt, and Justin inclines his head obligingly, promising drinks later, a dinner or two in thanks.

Justin has been taking dance lessons for two weeks now, at a Muggle place a few blocks over from the Ministry satellite office he’s been working in. Before this, his coordination has been strictly relegated to on the pitch and in the air; in normal situations he’s as clumsy as they come, dropping glasses and tripping down stairs, his paperwork is always charmed to self-organize when he predictably scatters it across the floor. Susan Bones was born and bred to be a lady and she still is at heart, her amiable nature buried under the snarly attitude and short fuse that makes her the Ministry’s top Enforcer on the squad. Susan took dance lessons as a child and she is quite possibly the only person in Justin’s life who won’t laugh at him when he inevitably falls over his own feet learning to do a simple box step; he’s always grateful for her friendship, but never more than when the dance instructor tells them after stretching that in this lesson, they’ll be learning to salsa.

“You’re going to hurt yourself,” Susan snickers, letting Justin rest his hand at her waist.

“That, or I’ll somehow cause a chain reaction that sets the whole place on fire.”

The music starts and Justin tries to keep up with the tempo, twisting his body this way and that until the instructor moves into the group and bodily readjusts his positioning. Susan snorts on a laugh as the instructor raises his arm and adjusts his hips, trying to get him to move smoother into the motion on the turn. Justin retaliates when they’re allowed to practice their freestyling by turning her once, twice, a third time; when he dips her without warning Susan tells him, hair brushing the floor, “See,  _this_ is how you accidentally kill someone.”

“Who said it’ll be accidental?”

At the end of it the lesson leaves him dizzy,  _five six seven eight_  still echoing in his brain as he mentally works through the steps, and it isn’t until Susan tosses his still-damp coat at him that he realizes they’re the only ones left. “I cast a Notice-Me-Not,” Susan says by way of explanation, running her wand over their clothes to dry them faster. “That way we can Disapparate instead of having to swim.”

Justin smiles at her as Susan pockets her wand, then holds out his hand for her to take. “One more for the road?” he asks, jabbing his wand in the direction of the instructor’s boom box so that music begins to play. Susan rolls her eyes and he grasps hold of her anyway, turning them both as he says, “Come on, help me with this one step and you can get out of here. Consider it your good deed for the day.”

“You’re my good deed for the whole  _month_ ,” Susan scoffs, and after a moment she adds, “I think it’s nice, you know. You learning how to do this. It’s… it’s a nice gesture.”

“Thanks. I’ve been wanting to do something to surprise her for a while, now, especially with everything going tits-up with her mother. Think she’ll like it?”

Susan shrugs, uncharacteristically quiet when she looks up at him. Susan lets him lead her through another turn and her voice is calm and careful as she asks him, “Why are you marrying Parkinson?”

“Because I love her.” It’s his immediate response; any other answer is unthinkable.

“But  _why_ do you love her?” Susan presses. “It’s just – it doesn’t make  _sense_ , Justin, you’re such a good person, and she’s a total cow, and she was  _always_ good at potions –”

Justin stops so quickly Susan’s feet keep moving for another beat and a half. His hand is still at her waist as he trains his eyes on one of his closest friends, trying to discern whether or not she’s asking if he’s been  _drugged_. “Is that what everyone thinks? Sue, what are you even asking me right now?”

Susan’s breath comes as a sharp inhale, her body moving into the defensive stance she uses in interrogations. She slides out from under Justin’s hand, ticking off her fingers as she talks. “You’ve turned into a  _completely_ different person since you and Parkinson got together. You’re moody and secretive whenever we ask you about her. She’s  _catty_ and  _rude_  and she  _never_  takes responsibility for her actions, and  _oh_ , let’s not forget that  _she’s_  the one responsible for the  _Cruciatus_  scars on my back –”

“That’s not fair, Susan!”

“What does it matter if it’s  _fair?_  Justin,  _no one_  likes her –”

“–  _Hannah_ likes her –”

“Hannah likes  _everybody_ ,” Susan counters, and Justin groans.

“I’m beyond done with this,” he snarls, lashing out with his wand to shut off the music and knocking the ballet bar down from the wall instead. “I’m sorry you feel this way, but I’m marrying Pansy in a month, Susan. I am going to  _marry_  her, and nothing you say to me right now is going to change that.”

Susan glares at him with an expression that’s hard to read: anger, resentment, sadness flit over her features in equal measure, finally settling on something blank and resigned. “Fine,” she says, serious and slow, “ _Fine_ ,” and Susan pushes away from him, hands falling her sides as she steps backwards into the center of the studio. She disappears with a  _crack_  before Justin can even move to stop her, her parting words echoing in the empty studio: “As my wedding gift to you, I’m not coming.”

 

 

 

 

_**three weeks** _

 

Justin spends dessert explaining the wards they’ll be putting around the venue, how he and Pansy want to blend her traditions with his  _without_ destroying the Statute of Secrecy in the process, and the only thing his mother has to say about it is, “You  _do_ realize this is going to be difficult, correct?”

  
Justin’s mother folds her hands together on the table, her eyes full of a disappointment Justin was not expecting. She stares at Justin down the length of the table and he feels, suddenly, like he is nine years old again: small and helpless and unable to explain not only how the lock on the china cabinet disappeared, but how all their good flatware ended up on the roof, of all places. He spins his wand absently on the tabletop, ignoring how his father flinches slightly when it stops to point at him.

“I… Justin, dear,  _please_ listen to yourself. Floating hors d’oeuvres trays?  _Flying_  cake toppers? Birds  _inside_  balloons, and,  _oh_ , I – the whole  _thing_  sounds…”

Justin’s brother doesn’t look at him, reaching for his wife’s hand while their parents stare at Justin. “Mum, it’s not  _that_ bad,” Richard starts, but doesn’t seem to have any idea how to finish. His one-year-old babbles to himself in his highchair and Richard’s wife drops his hand to pick him up, carrying him into the next room without a word.

Dinner, it must be said, has not gone as well as Justin expected.

“I’ll, um. I’ll help with the dishes, shall I?” Pansy says, giving his shoulder a light squeeze as she passes his chair. She waves her wand and dishes, glassware, silverware, it all rises up from the table, floating towards the kitchen as Pansy follows behind his sister-in-law. Justin swallows hard, listening to the tableware clatter into the sink.

“I just –” says Justin’s father, already exasperated, “I don’t see why the two of you can’t just go about all this the  _normal_  way.”

“This  _is_ normal for me.”

“Normal for  _Pansy_ , you mean. You were brought up proper C of E, Justin, and I can’t  _believe_ you expect us to –”

Justin rises from the table, hand instinctively curling around the handle of his wand. His father has never quite gotten used to the sight of Justin’s wand, not the way his mother has, and he watches it carefully while Justin tucks it back into his sleeve.

“Dad. It’s not the end of the world if I don’t get married at St. Agnes. And we can pass off the other stuff as,  _God_ , I don’t know – an  _internet prank_ , or something. All I’m trying to say is that there’s – there’s some  _precautions_  we have to take, because of Pansy’s family.”

Justin’s parents share a look and Richard finishes the remainder of his wine, none of them acknowledging the real issue at hand. Sometimes Justin wonders if his parents regret letting him go to Hogwarts; he was down for  _Eton_ , remember, a year or two ahead of Prince William, and he could have  _been someone_ , could have made the contacts there that would have had him set for life. Instead he spent the majority of his twelfth year frozen and unconscious, then progressively surrounded by soul-sucking monsters, fire-breathing dragons, an impossibly bigoted governmental regime. He knows that his family loves him, that they’re proud of him and the work he does bridging their two worlds together, but he also knows how hard it is for them to not be afraid of his magic, of this ugly, unfamiliar world that sought his blood at seventeen and one day might want it again.

Justin sighs, suddenly tired. “We’re just putting some restrictions on who can and can’t come. That’s all. I think the only thing different from a ‘normal’ wedding is that some of her relatives might send up sparks instead of throwing rice.”

His parents look at him like he’s grown a second head and Justin feels like a liar. He stalks off into the kitchen to find the dishes doing themselves, Pansy and his sister-in-law playing with the baby. Justin stands at the sink and wonders how something as simple as a meal could have gone so wrong, so fast.

 

 

 

_**five days** _

 

 

Pansy is working overnight at the  _Prophet_ office to meet a last-minute deadline and Justin is in bed when he hears the knock at the door. He thinks it’s Pansy, at first, and wonders if she lost her key again, or if she was too tired or tipsy to Apparate right inside. Justin lumbers to the door, wand tucked into the waistband of his pajamas, only to find that it isn’t his fiancée standing behind the door, but her mother.

Genevieve Parkinson stands before him in her fur-lined traveling cloak, pulling leather gloves from well-manicured hands while she waits for her invitation indoors. Justin sputters briefly but steps aside, letting her sweep past him in a cloud of bergamot and vetiver that lingers in her wake. Genevieve is her daughter’s mirror, set thirty years in the future: they have the same jolie-laide face, the same grey-green eyes; she watches him with the same shrewd look Pansy sometimes has, the one she wears whenever she feels cornered.

“A more civilized man would have asked if I wanted something to drink,” she says, and Justin blinks at her, slowly on his guard.

“A more civilized woman wouldn’t have knocked after ten.”

Genevieve’s mouth twitches almost imperceptibly, her eyes dark and narrowed. “I assume your kitchen is able to at least make a proper pot of tea. If there’s one thing I’ve missed while living in Paris, it’s a good cup of English tea.”

Genevieve drapes her cloak over the back of a chair and moves around his kitchen as if she’d been there before; she fills the kettle with an  _“aguamenti”_  and prods at the burner on the stove with her wand until it lights. Justin follows her cautiously, choosing two mugs from the cabinet near the sink and setting them on the counter. There are two packets of Orange Pekoe fluttering sadly at the bottom of the box and Justin hands them to her silently, one eye on her wand.

“I suppose you’re wondering why I’ve chosen now to come and speak with you.”

“It crossed my mind.”

Genevieve takes a seat and motions for him to join her. The kettle whistles and with a wave of her wand it lifts itself into the air, pouring water into the waiting mugs, which then hover across the room to land neatly on the tabletop. Justin doesn’t move, hands gripping the back of the chair opposite hers. This is not how he wanted to meet his mother-in-law for the first time.

“I am here,” she says, spooning sugar into her tea, “Because I believe that you are making a mistake marrying my daughter.”

Justin only stares at her, not as surprised as he thought he would be.

“There is one in every generation, you understand, but  _never_ , not in a thousand years, did I think  _my_ daughter would grow up to be a –”

“Blood traitor?”

Genevieve regards him coolly. “We are on the same page, then,” she says, and then: “Have you no idea what it means for a girl of her station to lower herself to yours?”

“You do realize you aren’t the first person to tell me this? For months, now,  _years_ , most of my friends, hell, my  _parents_ –”

“They warn you because they understand the truth. It has nothing to do with House rivalries, or wartime collusions, or anything of that sort. You are a Muggleborn, yes?” At his nod, she says, “Then you of all people should know how difficult it is to integrate into a world that hates you.”

Genevieve sips her tea and pulls a thick envelope from the pocket of her traveling cloak, laying it flat on the table between them as she continues to drink in silence. The envelope trembles against the hardwood, buzzing lightly from the pressure of remaining unopened; it isn’t a Howler, at least that much is certain, but there’s no telling what kind of curse could be waiting for it under the heavy yellow parchment.

“It is not so much a matter of  _blood_ , you understand, as much as it is that your lives are simply not…  _compatible_. A witch like my daughter will not be happy settling for something beneath her talents, and neither will any of your children. Do you think that living in the land of Muggles will ever compare to a life with  _magic?_  They will leave you for our world almost as certainly as she will. Spare yourself years of heartache and end it while you can.”

Genevieve locks eyes with him and Justin’s blood runs cold, feels like it has literally stopped flowing in his veins and turned to ice, to snow. He’s read the phrase a thousand times but has never really understood what it meant until right now; he thinks he might actually pass out, he’s so angry. Genevieve moves to open the envelope and Justin’s wand somehow flies to his waiting hand, twitching in his palm in a way that hasn’t happened since he was eleven years old, feeling it connect to the magic inside him for the very first time.

“That’s enough,” he says, voice surprisingly steady for someone who just unintentionally cast a Summoning Charm without a wand. “I think you need to leave.”

Genevieve doesn’t answer, setting her half-finished tea to the side and rising gracefully from the table. She leaves without complaint, her head held high, her cloak draped artfully over her arm. “Think on it,” she says at the doorway. “I won’t speak of this to you again.”

Justin slams the door in her face.

In the kitchen, when he finds the strength to go back, the envelope still hisses on the table, smoke curling out from the edges in thick, green tendrils. Justin opens it with shaking hands, thumb sliding under the seal, and with a pop the contents explode over the table; it’s full of money,  _Muggle money_ , at least a thousand 100-pound notes spilling across the table, the chairs, the linoleum floor. The tea spills and the smell of it blends in with the money, orange and steam blending with that thick, greasy smell he knows and hates, so much of it he couldn’t possibly count it in one sitting. Justin scoops it up without thinking, pulls the heaps of crisp paper into his arms, and he throws it all into the wastebin he drags from under the kitchen sink.

Justin lights the fire with a match, not his wand; he tosses it in and watches it burn to ash.

 

 

 

  
_**one day** _

 

 

At this hour the gardens look like something out of a Van Gogh painting, all verdant fields and pale blue skies; the light slants over the landscape and it brings out the yellows of the wildflowers, the whites in the clouds. Justin leans on his elbow against the balcony railing while his brother lights a cigarette; he can see Pansy through the glass doors leading back to the party with a glass of wine in one hand, his mother standing beside her as they talk with one of his relatives.

“She’s cute,” Richard says around the filter, clicking the lighter until it catches. “What exactly does she see in you?”

Justin rolls his eyes. “Funny,” he drawls, snatching the cigarette out of his brother’s mouth. “Wait a bit with this, yeah? Mum’ll kill the both of us if she catches you with that.”

He pitches it over the side just as Hannah pushes through the balcony doors. “Stop hiding,” she chides him, “Get in and mingle.”

Justin gives her a tired salute but doesn’t move to follow, feeling more exhausted in this moment than he has in weeks. There are very few words outside of “complete and total clusterfuck” that he could use to describe the rehearsal dinner thus far: the majority of Pansy’s family declined to show and so did most of his friends, and the ones that did have done nothing but snipe at Pansy and her schoolmates from the cocktail hour all the way through the main course; Pansy had to ask her maid of honor to leave, Astoria and Draco Malfoy disappearing down a side staircase after the first course to avoid inciting another argument. Pansy’s mother was late arriving and she has spent most of the evening holding court in a corner with her son, while Justin’s parents and his brother have run themselves ragged trying to keep their extended relatives away from the magical side of the guest list.

Justin takes a deep breath and Richard claps him on the back. “Sure you don’t want a fag?” he asks, and Justin shakes his head.

Inside, his and Pansy’s guests are mingling in little groups across the private room the restaurant provided, both sides mainly keeping to themselves with very little overlap. Justin’s mother is steering Pansy around the small space, introducing her to this cousin and that great-uncle, and it takes very little urging before Justin reinserts himself into the fray, sidling up to Pansy and beginning to make the introductions himself. His mother and Richard get sidetracked by Ernie and Hannah, who are trying to explain the details of Ernie’s new job to one of his cousins without using the word “Portkey” or “Transfiguration.” One of Justin’s aunts compliments Pansy on her dress and Genevieve whispers something in French to her son, who laughs; Justin’s father narrows his eyes at them from his corner of the table, pensively nursing a glass of whiskey as he does.

They decided from the beginning that speeches might be a bad idea, but that doesn’t stop his father from standing to make a brief toast as the evening winds down, inviting the guests to raise a glass to his son and future daughter-in-law. Justin links his fingers through Pansy’s and squeezes as his father wishes them well: a life of patience and faith, good health and good children, and in that moment the weight that’s been filling Justin’s chest these past eight months seems to lift, however briefly, with the emptying of his champagne glass.

The feeling, though, does not last long: Genevieve accepts her glass but mutters darkly to the witches and wizards gathered around her. “Good children? With  _him_ as their father,  _ils seront bâtards_ ,” Genevieve’s comments to her son, “ _They’ll be mongrels_ ,” loud enough for the table to hear, and before Justin can even process what she said Pansy is on her feet, her glass of champagne shattered on the floor.

“ _Enough!_ ” she says, voice dropped down to a sibilant hiss, “I have had  _enough_  of you. I don’t care what you think of me, but if you  _ever_ talk about Justin in that way again, I will not need a wand to rip every single hair out of your head!”

Genevieve’s eyes flash, her face like stone, and Pansy moves to speak again only to be cut off by the resounding crack of her mother’s hand across her face. Pansy stares at her, green eyes wide and full of hurt, the red mark of a handprint blossoming quickly across her pale cheek. The room drops into dead silence, then bursts just as quickly into a roar as Justin’s father launches himself at Pansy’s mother, whiskey-fueled rage pushing him to defend Pansy even as Genevieve grasps blindly for her wand.

Ernie stops her, thank God, as the party devolves around them and Pansy brushes past him, forcing her way out to the balcony, and Justin starts to follow only to be caught at the sleeve by her brother, who holds him by the elbow and keeps him there. “She didn’t mean it,” Arden starts, and Justin shakes himself loose, blood spiking up hot and angry in his veins. Arden blinks at him, hands held up in supplication as Justin tells him to take his mother and leave, but his irritated tirade is short-lived; a fuse lit and then stamped out by an impatient foot.

He is tired of the pureblood mania, the inbred ideals that nearly destroyed that society from within, but above all he is sick of people trying to tell him how to live his life; how he is somehow worth more than Pansy by right of blood and Hogwarts house, that he must be under a curse, doped up on love potions if it means that he’s in love with her. And that’s the biggest joke of all, isn’t it? Neither side will let him forget their differences, but neither side will accept the changes they’ve made, the sacrifices they’ve made for themselves, for each other. Justin doesn’t think he’s ever really felt what real love was until Pansy: she  _knows_ him, the good and the bad, and he knows her, and there aren’t any secrets between them, no matter what others might think. They have their troubles; they fight like any other couple, and they work at it then, but everything else with her is just so natural and easy, and she is the first person he wants to see in the mornings and the last one he wants to see at night, and  _fuck_ , Justin still isn’t sure how all of this happened but he loves Pansy,  _he loves her_ , and he wants to be with  _her_ , not anyone else.

Dinner is over; there is no hope of recovering in time for dessert. Richard and Hannah work on escorting the magical guests to their Apparition points while Justin’s parents get hold of the valet. On the balcony, Pansy stands with her back to the glass, wind whipping at her hair as she looks out over the darkening landscape. Her hip pushes against the railing, palm cupping her elbow as she presses a hand to her face, and there is something dark and distant in her eyes Justin hasn’t seen before. She doesn’t flinch when he sets his hand at her waist; Pansy turns so that her face is in profile, leaving just the outline of her high cheekbones, the prominent point of her nose.

He doesn’t ask if she’s alright – there is no honest answer to that question, not right now. He settles on cupping her face in his hands, thumb brushing carefully over her bruised cheek as she finally lifts her gaze to meet his, and her eyes are wet with unshed tears. Justin pulls her to him, arms a firm weight around her as she presses her head into his chest, her breath warm against his skin through the fabric of his shirt.

“I’m here because I want to be,” he tells her, “I don’t want to be anywhere else. You know that, right?”

It’s the truest thing he thinks he’s ever said to her. Pansy nods at his words, sliding her arms around his torso in return. He holds her there for a long moment, her body warm against his as the sun sets beyond them, and neither one of them speaks for a long while.

“Everyone we know is insane,” he says against her hair. “Let’s call it all off and elope.”

Pansy huffs out a laugh at that, leaning back and brushing her fingertips under her eyes, trying to catch any stray tears that might fall. “Too late,” she says, moving up so she can kiss him. “We’ve already paid the caterers.”

 

 

 

_**the day of** _

 

 

On the day of the wedding Pansy is the picture of serenity in ivory and lace, skin pale as porcelain, her delicate veil set lightly into the careful architecture of her hair. Justin stands at the altar with his groomsmen, Richard and Ernie and Wayne neat and handsome in their pressed grey suits, the four of them waiting opposite Pansy’s line of violet-clad bridesmaids. The organist plays a Chopin tune Justin does not recognize but his mother does, bringing a gloved hand to her mouth to hold back tears when the church doors open one last time, when Pansy crosses the aisle. She has no one to give her away but herself.

  
Her mother and brother will leave after the ceremony, choosing an earlier Portkey back to France rather than attend the reception; Susan will come to the reception with a gift box under one arm and a grimace on her lips, she will not stay past dinner. Their families will always be difficult to manage, and their friends will never get along, he knows this plain as truth: there is still too much bad blood on both sides, an unwillingness to forgive –  _forget_ – the trespasses of the past. But Justin also knows that it doesn’t matter; time heals all wounds, he’s been told, and after this moment they will have nothing but.

Justin loves Pansy fully, intensely – for whatever it is worth, he loves her. She takes his hand when she reaches the altar and he is careful as he pushes back her veil, the officiant’s voice falling into the background as he clasps her hands in his, rubs his thumbs over her knuckles to calm her nerves, calm his own. He smiles when she meets his eyes and it takes a breathless moment for her to smile back, but then it comes, bright and real, and holds.


End file.
